Amid Troubles With Skanska, Forest City Ratner & Greenland File Permits For Next Pacific Park Building

While construction on Pacific Park’s (formerly Atlantic Yards’) B2 tower has come to a halt, Forest City Ratner and partners Greenland Holding Corps/Greenland USA are moving ahead with plans for construction at their next building–535 Carlton Avenue (on the corner of Dean Street)–according to New York YIMBY.

At 364,000 sq ft (275,000 exclusively residential), 535 Carlton will hold 298 units, and will be the shortest of the towers at Pacific Park at 19 stories. It will be built using traditional construction–not the modular methods used for B2. The building is slated as all affordable housing for families with maximum household incomes of $48,000-104,000 per year, and will break ground in December.

B2, on the other hand, has a less definite timeline. Construction group Skanska USA furloughed workers at their modular building materials factory on August 27, and filed a lawsuit against Forest City Ratner last week alleging that FCR had changed construction plans for B2 and not been forthcoming about “serious commercial and design issues facing the project.” FCR filed a countersuit, calling Skanska “in over its head from the outset” of the project and blaming it for scheduling delays and unplanned costs.

If the dispute between Skanska and FCR is not resolved by September 23, says the letter, workers will be laid off. Said FCR President MaryAnne Gilmartin in a letter to Skanska released to the media, “[W]e strongly believe as a joint venture we have an obligation to the 157 workers who have lost their jobs because of the unauthorized, forced furlough that you, as managing member, have imposed on them.”

Skanska USA Building’s Richard Kennedy responded that FCR was “engaging in a propaganda exercise to take the public’s eye off the serious consequences of its failures at the B2 Project.”

On Friday, Forest City subsidiary FCRC Modular also filed a breach of contract suit against Skanska, seeking an injunction to resume operations at the modular materials factory.

Though B2 was originally supposed to be completed by July 25, fewer than a third of its 32 planned stories have been erected to date. Its new expected date of completion is late 2015.

In June, a judge ordered that 2,250 affordable apartments must be finished on the property by 2025. Under the same agreement, if Forest City Ratner does not begin construction on 535 Carlton by December 30, the company could face up to $5 million in fines.

Image via CookFox